Intel to buy Broadcom?

March 13, 2018 | 09:55

Rumour has it that in an attempt to remain global market leader Intel is secretly investigating the possibility to take over Broadcom. The reason for this is the desired acquisition of Qualcomm by the latter. If this spectacular acquisition will take place, Intel would face a competitor of similar size.

Rumour has it that in an attempt to remain the global market leader Intel is secretly investigating the possibility to take over Broadcom. The reason for this is the desired acquisition of Qualcomm by the latter. If this spectacular acquisition will take place, Intel would face a competitor of similar size. If, on the other hand, the takeover would fail then Intel might want to buy Broadcom to secure its own position.

$170,000,000,000

Financial analysts are sceptical about the possibility of such an enormous takeover. Already the 117-billion-dollar bid made by Broadcom for Qualcomm is huge but Intel would have to cough up even more — some estimate the price at 170 billion dollars — to achieve its goal.

Intel refuses to comment on these speculations and stated that it is currently fully committed to integrating their recent acquisitions of Altera and Mobileye.

Trump gets involved

US President Donald Trump too jumped in the Qualcomm takeover fight as he feels that it may be a national security threat for the US and he has therefore ordered to block the deal.

In the recent past the Trump government also blocked the takeover of Lattice Semiconductor by the Chinese company Canyon Bridge and the acquisition of LED specialist Cree by Infineon from Germany.

Across the barricades

Interestingly, Cree just announced that it acquired Infineon RF Power Business instead, showing that there are ways around government barricades.

Acme Corporation

Anyway, what will happen, the future will tell. In the meantime we will follow this battle of the giants with great interest as it may take the world yet another step closer to one global Acme Corporation.